LONDON (AFP) - European stock markets were little changed in early trading after a less than spectacular session on Wall Street overnight amid jitters over corporate earnings and resurgent oil prices.
The London FTSE 100 index nudged up 0.04 percent to 4,570.0 points, the Frankfurt DAX 30 shed 0.24 percent to 3,896.23 points while the Paris CAC 40 edged up 0.07 percent to 3,655.56 points.
The DJ Euro Stoxx 50 index of leading eurozone shares dipped 0.18 percent to 2,730.59 points.
The euro stood at 1.2303 dollars.
European markets have enjoyed a rebound from the lows of the summer, with the London market reaching a two-year high earlier this week, but the rally has run out of steam in recent days.
"We saw a strong bounce but not on terribly high volumes in the second half of the summer," said Alex Scott, equity strategist at fund manager Seven Investment Management.
"Arguably after such a strong bounce so quickly there was a case for a degree of consolidation.
"A lot of the economic data is not terribly supportive. It's quite a mixed picture. Earnings expectations have been rising, but just more recently they've tended to rise, certainly in the US, at a more measured pace," he added.
In New York shares ended mostly lower Thursday as oil prices pushed ahead despite news that the US government may loan some oil from its strategic reserves to refiners to ease supply strains caused by Hurricane Ivan.
The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.70 percent to 10,038.90 points while the technology-heavy Nasdaq eked out a gain of 0.04 percent to 1,886.43 points.
The main broad-market indicator, the Standard and Poor's 500 index, fell 0.47 percent to 1,108.36 points.
In London shares in Cadbury Schweppes fell 1.49 percent to 428.5 pence after the confectionery and soft drinks giant warned it expects to deliver full-year profit towards the lower end of expectations after sales of fizzy drinks were hit by poor European weather.
However, the company was at pains to stress it had flagged the bad news at its interim figures in July and that it was not issuing a profit warning.
Shares in Dutch electronics giant Philips dropped 1.22 percent to 18.63 euros in Amsterdam after a presentation to investors by the head of the group's semiconductors business, Scott McGregor.
The executive said he expects the group's production capacity utilisation to fall in the fourth quarter from around 95 percent in the third quarter and 99 percent in the second quarter.
"After the meeting I think people started to get nervous as Philips was slightly cautious on the fourth quarter outlook," a dealer at Kempen and Co said. "The stock has been slowly moving down, although volumes are not that heavy compared to past days when they have given these presentations."
In Asia the Tokyo Nikkei-225 index lost 1.13 percent to 10,895.16 points on Friday, its first close under 11,000 since August 23, amid concerns about the impact on rising oil prices on the Japanese economy.
In Hong Kong the Hang Seng Index ended down 1.61 percent at 13,066.84 points.